Q: What’s a bad night like at work?
A: For me a bad night is when I’m stressed and I get that yucky stressed feeling going through my body That tends to override any part of what’s actually happening at work. But otherwise it’s if you get a horrible customer, someone who’s malicious or rude. You get a lot of rude customers. You get guys trying to grab you all night. That sort of stuff.
Q: What’s a good night like?
A: In a great mood. Really enjoy it. Have really nice conversations. You’re like, ‘Awww, everyone’s lovely.’ It’s always fun having a customer who’s paying you that you actually enjoy spending time with, who gets how it works. So you don’t have to discuss money every ten minutes, which can be awkward. He gets it and just pays you.
Q: Do you ever have to haggle?
A: I don’t bother. Some people want you to so I just don’t. There’s always someone else that they can go and talk to. They mostly know what the deal is.
Q: How are strippers different from other girls?
A: They’re better at dressing. They tend to know what suits their bodies as opposed to what they want to wear. I think they tend to be a bit more confident.
Q: They seem to be lovely. Aren’t most strippers lovely? Or just your friends?
A: Well I like my friends. I don’t get along with all the strippers. They’re probably pretty – at least at work – lacking in ‘judgmentalness’. Because you kind of have to be to get along with the clients. Not always, but you’re going to get someone in who doesn’t necessarily agree with you and part of your job is to, you know, humour them.
Q: What do you like about being a stripper? Is it a good job?
B: It’s a fantastic job. Because of freedom. There’s a lot of time to live your life. A lot of people seem to live lives which are just work.
Q: Yes. That’s normal.
B: I know, but why do that? Why would you? Where’s the life then? What’s the point? So that’s a very good thing about it. And I like working for myself. I don’t do well when people try and tell me what to do. I don’t do well when people try and push me to work harder. I work as hard as I want. Sometimes I work very hard and sometimes I don’t, and that’s up to me and I like that. And when you’ve got your head screwed on it’s quite good for your ego. It’s a compliment.
Q: What’s bad about being a stripper?
B: I think you can lose perspective. I think you need to get away from the job reasonably often because you do lose perspective about what’s important, like how important it is to look good, and how to relate to people in general, rather than just in that environment. If you’re not feeling good about yourself, putting yourself in a situation where you feel like people are looking critically at you, assessing you, is not really a very healthy situation to be in. And making unpredictable money is quite difficult sometimes. Even though its pretty good money, the unpredictability of it can be a bit stressful. It makes it hard to organise your finances.